This second installment in the People and Places series was written by DePaul University student Jason Ryan

“Where the tamales at?” tweets someone at 8:05 p.m. “Tamales are at the Long Room two feet away from me!” another answers 30 minutes later. “Ten Cat!” proclaims the next. At 9:40 p.m. “Where are you tamale guy!? We’re at the Continental seeking your services” is answered with “at Empty Bottle. Red cooler.” This chatter continues until 1:00 a.m. Twitter has a new utility for the Chicago bar scene: Tamale Guy Tracker. Hundreds tweet the whereabouts of Claudio Velez, the Tamale Guy. He makes his rounds to practically every bar on the near Northwest Side, bringing his piping hot tamales to hungry bar hoppers.

When I first decided to write about this local late-night celebrity, I pictured a wonderful interview. Since I had seen him several times before, I figured it would be easy. I dreamed of making the rounds with him as his right hand man for an evening. This dream quickly ended. It took me two weeks just to see him. Velez has inspired a massive networking campaign. “He’s everywhere! You never know where he is going to be,” said Clint McMahon recently in a radio interview. McMahon created the tamaletracker Twitter page.

At 10:45 on a Friday evening, Claudio enters the Hungry Brain at Belmont and Western. A loud, almost frantic voice rings out, “Tamale, tamale, hot tamales!” Suddenly, after two weeks of weekend bar adventures, there he is—the elusive Tamale Guy, with a wad of singles and his red cooler filled with tamales. Within five minutes, he’s sold more than a dozen tamales and is off, nearly running out the door to his next destination. Like Chicago street vendors a hundred years ago, he is a nomadic trader with routine stops.

Tamaletracker is much more than a gateway to bar food. It is a sign of social change and a showcase for a local man who some call a hero. With over 1,600 followers on Twitter and over 5,000 fans on Facebook, Claudio Velez, without trying, has become a local sensation in today’s social networking craze.

> Learn about the history of street vendors in Chicago

Photo at top courtesy of Clint McMahon

Tags: bars, Claudio Velez, DePaul University, Facebook, Jason Ryan, Near Northwest Side, People and Places, Peter Alter, tamales, Twitter

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 at 11:57 am and is filed under History, New Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.